What Values Make You a Good Person?

With basic good manners falling by the wayside, celebrities with no apparent talent being worshipped as icons, lack of religion/faith, teenage pregnancies, high divorce rates and so many other social issues, how, in these days, do we know if we are a good person? What moral standards are there to act as our yardstick? Here are some values I believe make a good person:

1. Valuing Human Life

A lack of value for human life leads to terrorism and genocide. Regimes around the world both modern and historical have cast off their respect and value for human life and have slaughtered hundreds and thousands on the back of it. Valuing human life also means that if your beloved dog was drowning and if a stranger was drowning, you would choose the human. If you value human life, it shouldn't be a tough choice, but it can be. For example, what if the person drowning was a stranger but a criminal? Or, what if your dog was a puppy and the person was ill with terminal cancer? What if the drowning person was a pregnant woman? What if your dog had saved you from drowning the year before? What if it was a child drowning? What if it was a Cuban drowning as he tries to enter the country illegally? The value comes in being able to make what you believe is the right choice.